"business-to-consumer and business-to-business commerce conducted by
way of the
Internet
or other electronic networks.
E-commerce
originated in a standard for the exchange of documents during the 1948 - 49
Berlin blockade and airlift. Various industries elaborated upon the system until
the first general standard was published in 1975. The electronic data
interchange (EDI) standard is unambiguous, independent of any particular
machine, and flexible enough to handle most simple electronic transactions. In
addition to standard forms for business-to-business transactions, e-commerce
encompasses much wider activity - for example, the deployment of secure private
networks (intranets) for sharing information within a company, as well as
selective extensions of a company's intranet to collaborating business networks
(extranets). A new form of cooperation known as a virtual company, actually a
network of firms, each performing some of the processes needed to manufacture a
product or deliver a service, has flourished"
Since Internet is an active rather than
passive information access tool, political internet users are more
willingly to access political information than general Internet user
Here is another report that shows different miorities that are consumers on-line, their media usage, computer and internet usage, and on line activities.